#there was a reference? does that mean a tiny frog in a rose for reals?

[naidhtbomb]

i thought this was a touched-up photo

finally finished this painting i sketched out months ago… please click for better quality i know tumblr is gonna kill it (reference used)

[yugirl]

Day 12: “Weapon Change”

Ever wanted to see Zane/Ryo in the Red Dorm? Or Alexis/Asuka duel with dragons? Get creative today with dorm swaps and deck swaps!

@gxmonth

((I love those fics where it’s like, “everything is the same except Jaden is a ____ with a ____ deck. So here’s my iteration. Jaden thinks he is a princess with a fairytale themed deck. Shenanigans ensue. Tw for bullying))

Jaden Syrus and Chumley walked to class. At this point, Jaden had gotten used to the odd looks from the Obelisks and the Ra students. They wanted to judge? Fine.

They had arrived at their spots in the lecture hall only to see Jaden’s seat had been completely vandalised. Stuff like “crazy”, “insane”, and “go back to your castle princess!”

Jaden frowned. Well, this soured his mood. He could hear the snickering from the Obelisks. But a princess does not cower to mere bullies. He took a piece of material from his bag and covered his part of the table with it. He then gracefully sat down with his back straight.

“A princess does not allow mere peasants get the better of them…” he said calmly.

Syrus sighed and sat next to him “you’re so cool, Jay!”

“Yeah! Jay! You’re the coolest princess around….” Chumley encouraged.

“I don’t even know why you keep calling him that… he’s not even a real princess!”

The three boys looked up to see a girl from Obelisk blue, wearing her hair up and thick make-up on her face.

“Oh! How do you do?” Jaden smiled and grabbed the ends of his Slifer red jacket so he could curtsy.

“You’re not a real princess!” She repeated. “I would know because I actually am one!”

“Yeah, you tell him, Rose!” Another Obelisk student called out.

“Is that so? Well, it’s wonderful to know there are other princesses at the academy!” Jaden smiled, “it’s lovely to meet you, Princess Rose.”

Rose twitched in anger “you’re a boy! You can’t be a princess!!”

“Hey!” Chumley spoke up, “don’t talk to Jaden like that! If he says he’s a princess, then he is one!!”

“Don’t get in trouble for my sake, sir painter” Jaden smiled and patted Chumley on the cheek. “But thank you for defending me….”

Jaden then turned to look at Rose. “I don’t see why you need to be upset. This castle is big enough for the both of us!”

Rose got offended again. “How dare you! You’re not a princess!! You’re just some loser playing pretend! I’m the only princess here!!”

“Well then, if you’re so upset about there being two princesses, then why don’t we settle this in a duel!”

Everyone turned to see Alexis standing up.

“Oh! Prince Alexis! Good day to you!” Jaden smiled and curtsied

“Good day to you too, Jaden” Alexis smiled and bowed back. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she did have fun playing along.

“Alexis, you’re with him!?” Rose asked, shocked.

“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that if you’re really upset about this, then settle it with a duel!”

Rose scoffed, “fine! If that’s how you’re going to be about it, We’ll duel!! If I win, then you stop pretending and never refer to yourself as a princess again.”

“I accept, but if I win, then we will both be the princesses of this castle!” Jaden responded politely.

“This school isn’t a castle but whatever!” Rose scoffed.

“Jaden, are you sure?”

“A princess always accepts a fair competition. Besides, I don’t plan on losing.”

Before the duel, Chumley led Jaden to the Slifer dorms. “It’s not much, but I thought it would be suitable for a princess to duel in.”

He revealed the white and red ball gown based on the Slifer girls uniform, tailor-made for Jaden.

Jaden gasped before pulling Chumley into a hug. “Oh, this is beautiful thank you so much!! Did you make this!?”

“Me and Syrus!” Chumley smiled

“We wanted to do something to cheer you up after everything that’s been going on!”

Jaden pulled them both in to kiss them on the cheek. “Oh, thank you both so much!!”

He loved his subjects- no, his friends dearly.

Jaden put the gown on and headed to the duel arena.

Rose seemed to have a similar idea as she was waiting for him in a beautiful blue gown.

She had to admit she was taken aback by how elegant Jaden was. He gracefully stepped up onto the arena and curtsied. “Very well! Are we ready to duel?”

“Totally! I’ll go first!! I’ll play Beelzefrog in attack mode and place one card face down.”

“I play Cure Mermaid in attack mode.” She made quick work of Beelzefrog.

Rose- 3700

Jaden - 4000

“Fine, I play Unifrog. This allows me to attack you directly,” Rose retorted. Jaden gasped as he was attacked, but he recovered quickly

Rose - 3700

Jaden - 3600

“First, I activate Cure Mermaid’s special ability giving me 800 life points. Next, I summon Fairy Tail Snow! Isn’t she cute?” Jaden smiled

“Adorable…” Rose gasped, having never seen that card before.

“Fairy Tail Snow has a great special ability too! She can flip your frog back into face-down defence mode!”

“What?!”

“Now let’s battle, first Cure Mermaid attacks Unifrog! Next Fairy Tail Snow attacks!! Red Apple Drop!!”

The tiny squirrel-like creature created a giant red apple and yeeted it at Rose. Rose gasped in anger as her life points dropped.

Rose - 1850

Jaden - 4400

“Ugh, you’re so rude!!” Rose scoffed

“I’ve been nothing but cordial this whole duel. You’ve been rude to me, Princess Rose, which I must say, isn’t very princessly at all!”

“Shut UP! You’re not a princess!!”

“In any case, it’s your move….”

“Fine! I play frog resurrection. I send one Unifrog to the graveyard to get another up on my field! Then I’ll sacrifice it to summon Des Frog!”

“Oh no!! That’s ones stronger than both Fairy Tail Snow and Cure Mermaid!!” Syrus squeaked

“That’s right, and now I’ll be attacking your mermaid!!”

Cure Mermaid was eliminated, and Jaden lost another 400 life points.

“That’s not good….” Jaden mumbled.

“Next, I play the spell card Aquarium Stage, so even if you’re able to give your little squirrel a boost, you can’t touch my prince!!”

“Your prince?”

“That’s right! My Des Frog is my prince!! One day we’re going to run away together with my other princes too….”

“…eh?”

“Princes? Rose is just as crazy as the Slifer is!” An Obelisk shouted, no longer charmed by Rose.

“I-I’m not crazy!! My princes are real!!”

Some of the crowd started to jeer at Rose, causing her to become quite upset.

“I believe you, Rose!”

Rose looked up to see Jaden smiling kindly at her.

“Y-you do…?”

“Of course!!” Jaden smiled “but you shouldn’t insult other people when you get upset when you’re insulted… how do you think I felt when you were picking on me….”

“N-… not great, I guess.”

“And besides, you’re a princess! You shouldn’t let the words of inconsiderate bullies get the better of you… a princess should hold her head high and stick with what makes her happy!”

“W-wow… thanks, Jaden….”

“In any case, I think it’s time I end this!!

Rose - 1850

Jaden - 3600

“I play the spell card double summon!! With this card, I can summon more than once per turn!”

“First, I’ll summon a friend for Snow! Fairy Tail Rella!”

The small dog appeared in the arena, admiring her glass slippers.

“Why would Jaden summon her? She’s still not strong enough in comparison to Des Frog….” Syrus said, confused.

“The wonderful thing about her is every effect from a spell or trap card is targeted towards her, sparing Snow from your spell card,” Jaden explained.

“Oh, so that means Aquarium Stage’s effect is moot!” Chumley whispered.

“Even if that’s true! Snow still isn’t strong enough to attack my frog!”

“I understand that, which is why she will retire for someone who can! My Blizzard Princess!”

“What!?”

“Blizzard Princess has an effect that should I sacrifice a spell caster; I only need to tribute one monster to summon her! Guess what Snow is!”

“Oh no!!”

Jaden smirked and summoned Blizzard Princess.

Blizzard Princess smiled and waved her Ice Mace.

“Blizzard Princess, attack with blizzard crush!!”

Des Frog disappeared, and Rose lost 900 life points.

“It’s over, Rose! Fairy Tail Rella, Glass Slipper Strike!”

Rella tried to run only to trip and fall, her glass slipper flying and striking Rose.

Rose - 0

Jaden - 3600

The holograms cleared, and Jaden smiled, curtsying gracefully. “A good day to you….”

Rose had to admit, she was impressed. Jaden radiated power, elegance and grace.

“You really are a princess….”

Jaden smiled as he straightened up. But now it was Roses turn to curtsy.

“Princess Jaden… I’m so sorry that I was so rude to you… I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me….”

“You’re already forgiven, Princess Rose!” Jaden smiled “but I do hope you introduce me to your other princes sometime….”

“I would love to! In fact, I can guarantee you’ll see them soon!” Rose smiled and pointed her finger “because from now on, you and I are rivals. I’m going to keep doing my best to be the top student! May the best princess win!”

Jaden smiled. “I accept your challenge!”

[lokislittlemagpie]

ask 16 and 32 wuw

((WOAH OMG HI LMAO- I'll add a meme for them too just to show more of their personality-)

Lets start with Benny!

(THIS IS A 20 YEAR TIME SKIP TO THE CURRENT SERIES!!!)

32) (this actually helps with explaining him anyway-) Benny was designed after Brook the skeleton big time- He has darker skin and jade eyes like his mom (an undead demon 1800s girl i made a long while back-) Unlike both parents, he is fully living since he was created by CC! But he does have a veerry sensitive body (can get sick very easily or can very easily die by eating anything too spicy-) small heart issues, and is kinda thin- He is about 6 feet 7 inches and has dark black curly hair that he usually has inna tight pony tail! (kinda like Usopp but it drops down more, not as round rlly) He is 18!

16) Benny, as i said, is a lot like Brook but he is also incredibly inspired by Cyclonus too! He does have a love for old music and loves sword canes- But hes a huge chicken like Brook too- He loves Les Misrerables and he loves Hamilton- if you even get this man started, he will earrape One more Day and Satisfied until that's all you can hear in your worst nightmares-

32) Yunni is about 5 feet 6 inch of pure sass- He is blond with big green eyes that are quite beautiful actually- He loves pink booty shorts and crop tops with things that say the dumbest jokes like "kawaii on the streets" on the front and "Senpai in the sheets" on the back- He is a great cook and will gladly be your sassy prep boi- his hair is kinda a combo of Sanji and Italy from Hetalia- He has that one strand of curly hair like he does but theat medium hair that covers one eye like Sanji but it's longer on the left and curls at the tips! He is 24!

16) He is inspired by 4 characters! Sanji, Italy, Swerve, and Bumblebee- His personality is a mush of Swerves low self-esteem jokes, Bumblebee Bayverse sass, Italy's cuteness, and Sanjis slight anger problems and his cooking skills aren't as great but hes a great bar tender! He loves Jeff Dunham, Gordon Ramsay, and Kevin Hart and he references their jokes or threats on the daily-

32) Ruby is the daughter of two black magicians! Basil Hawkins and Dorothy Hopkins (whos next!) She has looong hair like her dad but is a slightly dark brown with black a the tips! She has his deep red eyes tho- Her face is more rounded like her mother's and she's only 5 foot 4- She's calm ajd quiet but can and will burn you not just literally but with just five words, your life is over- She always has a small smile on her face and always carries her book of spells! She has both her parents clothing sense wth dark clothes but she has to have her fathers old school frills and long black and red robes like her mother! She is 20!

16) She is inspired obviously from Hawkins- But she is very slightly tinted with Drift from Bayverse! She will tell dark dark poems at honestly the not so best of times- and she loves swords! She loves Adventure time and Steven Universe- Its the only light side to her just don't say that to her face-

32) Dorothy is a 5 foot 5 Long slightly curly black curly haired magician! She has a third eye that runs in her now extinct royal family. She is always gently smiling but will put you in your place- One cold stare and make you wanna regret being born- She keeps her third eye covered with her hair and has emerald green eyes- her third eye has a huge dry eye problem so its kinda lightly tinted yellow with red veins- but its still green! She loves her medical dark magic gowns and gear! She is more into demons and sacrifice while Ruby likes to summon little demons and do blood moon stuff! They both love crystals tho! Amythest and Quartz are a must-

16) She is inspired by only a two people- Loki from Marvel with her slight sense of humor and honestly her hair- And she is also like The Black Magician who is from Princess and the frog who I can't remember the name of- She becomes someone else if she uses dark magic too long at once! She loves soap operas and would die to see Phantom of the Opera live-

32) Lucas is a fun loving spider mink human hybrid! He is the son of Admiral Kizaru and My GFs OC Kasumi! He looks a lot like his dad but his personality is a little different! His hair is more curly and his a milk chocolate brown! He has four eyes but usually only uses the blue bottom eyes and keeps the red upper ones closed- He has elf like pointy ears and his dad's ridiculous lips- He has his eye brows too- But! he has his mom's fangs and eyes! He also has for slightly clawed arms and hands! He is just at perfect 6 feet! He uses swords and webs in battle that come from his hands like spiderman! He is calm but has many jokes and could be hiding anywhere- He is always smiling and tapping a foot to some song in his head- He loves his light peach orange uni pocket hoodie and his loose dark blue jeans with his converse-

16) Hes inspired by Kizaru of course and he is like a Rose Trantula kinda- More calm than most big spiders but still can and will fight you- He is also inspired clearly by spiderman! He also kinda reminds me of Whirl when he snaps- Or like IDW Drift when he gets Slicy dicey- He loves the old stuff like Ren and Stimpy and he still gets nightmare about "return the slaaaab" From Courts the cowardly dog-

32) Julie Ann is a pink haired girl with purple tips and is full of spunk and curse words- She has a thin mechanical arm after getting it blown of by her own inventions! She is smart and narcissistic but secretly fears being alone- She loves military boots and torn up rock shirts that are almost a little revealing thanks to the giant arm pit holes- she loves black leather pants and always has half her head shaved on the left while the right is just flying around! But she does have a piece perminantly braided in the front of her head on the right and it's a just a few inches passed her shoulders- She will fist fight god and walk backwards into hell with both birds up- she has sky blue eyes!

16) She is inspired By Julie Sue from the sonic comics! (The older stuff) and Eustass Kidd from one piece! She can be a lot like Braintsorm/ Whirl too- Shes a scary woman- Five Finger Death Punch and the all edgy verse of DC is her life-

32) Mel is A very shy GIANT Angler fish- I know in real life male anglers are tiny as hell but I really wanted a big shy man and Mel happened- Melvin is green with sea blue spike fins on his arms and back of his calfs! He has huge spike fin gills too but has learned to breath air over time- he has the little dangling trap from his forehead and has a combed over blue mohawk- He has big sharp teeth that poke out from his mouth in random places- his hands have blue webbing and so does his feet- His eyes are black and have gold squiggly irises- He is at a scary 7 feet 4 inches but he just wants hugs- This man cries when watching Endgame and Phantom of the Opera- He has a love for shirts that are just a little loose on him and loves jean shorts with sandles! He also loves crocs- Don't tease him he'll literally cry-

16) He is inspired actually by Ten from IDW and a bit of Endgame Hulk- He is also like inspired by Katakuri from One Piece! His sharp teeth from Kat and his body build is not quite as beefy as Hulk but he's kinda close honestly- He loves Steven Universe and the original Teen Titans! He squeals like a fan boy when ever he sees Beast boy-

32) Jake is happy smart mini Dobbie! He is the shortest standing at 4 feet 5 inches! He has a stub tail and a golden pirate ring piercing on his right ear! He has all the colors and looks of a dobbie he just smol- He loves to fix things and will growl if you poke to much fun at him- Ruby calls it 'Short man syndrom' and he hates it- He only wears blue torn up blue mean shorts- No shirt and no shoes- His eyes are bright bby boi sea blue! He loves head pats every now and then and loves bacon- You can kill this mans family and hell forgive you for 5 pounds of bacon- He blasts Wheezer and Gorillaz from his work shop at all times!

16) He is inspired by your typical tiny Dobbie! But he kinda looks like a mechanic version of Rewind- He is also inspired by an old friends dog who was named Jake! He doesn't watch much tv or movies but if he does its gotta Be Marvel- This man looks up to Tony Stark like a god and has an Iron man poster for modivation in his shop-

((I hope this isn't like too gross or annoying- Ive never mentioned any of my OCs- In fact i just forgot my main OC Lola- w o w- If you want stuff for her just let me know! I'll even try to find my old doodles and my gfs doodles if you want me to-))

[dinahinthehat]

❀ HEADCANONS ❀

001. Illustrations

The room is messy. The kind of mess you look at and find yourself staring at the person who owns it. Mess, yet no dirt. Pillows stack at the bed’s feet, quilts are thrown on top of golden tables and rustic white chairs. A dress lays on top of the bed with a couple of daisies that somehow wandered their way from the quaint little flower garden by the window, all the way to the only spot available next to the dress.

( She means to wear them both. )

There’s a tiny corner that remains untouched. As if a hurricane of rose petals and clear cotton candy had swept past the space and the only thing that hadn’t been misplaced was that tiny corner next the the mattress. It lies on top of five golden lined shelves. A collection of colorful book spines with beautiful typography. Each containing stories of every kind with illustrations worth framing.

It started out as a gift from her father. As he arrived home from one of his many travels, he carried in his hand a gorgeous package of silver wrap and shimmering blue script. Inside, a story about a princess and a frog with beautiful drawings that showed the frog receiving a kiss from the princess. What his father didn’t know, was that the girl would not be so keen as to grow up and leave books with pictures on them behind. Instead, she came to cherish and collect them. Although she’s picked up a few favorite books that require more reading than admiring illustrations, there’s a very select group of titles she’d actually chose over a beautiful cover and a talented illustrator.

( Precisely the reason why an English major was out of the question. )

002. Business woman

A title that’s picked out from a pool of majors available on the city’s university. She walks past and through one of the building’s arcs. One of those that remain close to the edge of what one should define as the university campus. She walks past and through, and as she does you can see how it hangs above her loosely and eventually starts to slip off. Until she’s walked past the limiting sidewalk and it’s completely gone.

( It was not her first choice. )

The moment she steps out of the university, she gets to be herself again. Even though the girl is not entirely sure of what that even means. Junior year, business management major. There’s plenty of things to be done with such a title, though none of the things sound appealing just yet. The college life was a life she started with “undecided” as a label she wore proudly around her neck; eager to find the answers necessary to transform undecided into decided. A year later, she still wears the label around her neck, though it’s camouflaged by one chosen by her father. It would’ve been embarrassing to remain so publicly lost for more than a year.

It doesn’t seem to affect her all that much. If she has to study anything, business is actually not such a bad choice. It just pales in comparison to the things she gets to do once she’s able to close those dreadful textbooks.

( But her mother says those aren’t things you can study in college. )

003. Art

In the bedroom’s walls there’s artwork. Tiny and simple wood frames arranged in a straight line by the window, a golden baroque-inspired one sits by the desk where one would usually find a calendar or a planner, other pieces are put on display without the need of a frame, thick paper hanging above the bed frame. There’s flowers pressed into glass and cloth, some others pressed in between paper and made to adorn quotes and pictures. There’s watercolor pieces hanging about the room and interrupting journals that have never been properly filled out. There’s a mix of both and something more; collages narrating stories and offering an alternate reality to familiar scenes and famous faces.

( The keyword is artwork. )

The gallery contained within the room brings a smile to the girl’s face. Despite it not being all her own work, it all depicts the beauty of the world in one way or another. Beautiful and special. However, it’s not something she’d confidently present to a professional gallery, or even dare to sell online. The borrowed pieces perhaps deserve some recognition –Pieces made by friends or bought from strangers on one of those tiny art markets. Her own pieces are an entirely different story, though. They may look pretty enough to be put up on her wall, but in the girl’s eye, they lack the content that real art holds within.

Meaning and references that the girl can’t even begin to understand. You just find her staring at one of the paintings in the museum. A painting with multiple explosions of colors with an abstract shape. And you see a tear slide down her cheek, witness her very wide eyes turn a shade of pink. A tear she doesn’t quite understand where it comes from because while she can feel her heart moved, she can’t put a finger on what exactly did the moving just yet.

( And maybe she never will. )

004. Crossroads

They’re a funny thing. Curious. Very meaningful if you stop and think about it… The girl should know. She stands before one just now. Her hair is tied up into a messy ponytail, she looks like she just came from somewhere with her messy updo, dusty clothes and sweaty skin that glows with the sun. The one standing by her side confirms said assumption as they go from standing next to the girl, to standing a few steps ahead. They wave back, turn around and cross the street, but the girl remains put. Uncertain.

( A metaphor, obviously. )

It seems as she’s come all this way holding somebody’s hand. At first it was her mother and father who grabbed her hand as they introduced the world to her. Then it was Alice, always leading the way as they got themselves into the most amazing of adventures. Along the way a few people joined and took over from times to time. While the girl seemed to be perfectly capable of spending some time on her own, able to head into a little adventure of her own when no one else was available, in the end she always came back to her spot besides the curious blonde.

And so the girl stands before the crossroad. Watching as her dearest friend lets go of her hand to go down a path on her own. A path that she can’t follow through this time around. And she looks around and finds nobody else to hold onto this time around. Sure she has a few friends, her family of course, some other acquaintances. But it’s not time for her to find a replacement, it’s time for her to choose a path of her own.

( The thought of it makes her feel so terribly lost. )

005. Tattoo

A handful of lovely daisies drawn with colored ink and a needle right by her left ankle. Permanently on display since its position is so precise, it can’t be fully covered by your average sock. Neither can it be touched by your average jean’s lower hem. That is, if the girl is ever actually caught wearing something like an average jean and a pair of shoes that require socks reaching up to the ankle.

The story of how it came to be is one the girl thinks about with a smile, although whether the tattoo belongs in one of her cherished decisions or belongs on the pile of regrets, is something that’s yet being decided.

( Honestly, she’s come to be somewhat fond of it. )

A prime example of the girl’s way of life. Act first, think second. She’d been caught in the moment, not a meditated choice for neither in the group that walked into the tattoo shop, spent a couple of hours inside, and left with a new mark on their skin. See when a group holds your hand and walks your through, its easy to play along. It feels almost natural until they each go their separate ways after the deed is done and you’re left to think about the choices you ever so lightly made.

And so the girl stands before her mirror. Her blouse is loose and see-through whenever it’s touched by the sun’s light. Her shorts are pale and reach just below her bottom, leaving her legs completely uncovered. She stands with brown hair flowing past her shoulders and reaching the bottom of her lungs. Her eyes are curious as her head tilts to the side and her ankle twists in a funny looking way. Colorful daisies drawn on her skin are revealed before the mirror. It doesn’t sound like a choice she’d make without the rush of adventure driving her to it, yet she smiles at the sight.

( Maybe there’s more to her she’s yet to discover. )

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Last February, a website called Rave News reported that leading vaporwave producers were gathering in Montreal for an emergency summit to discuss "creeping fascism" in the scene. Vaporwave, an electronic subgenre conceived on the web in the early 2010s, is perhaps best described as post-apocalyptic mall music, with producers like Macintosh Plus and Saint Pepsi (now Skylar Spence) warping muzak, smooth jazz, and dated adult contemporary into airless, warbling soundscapes. It was a progressive-leaning genre that seemed to satirize consumer culture. "I always assumed it was transparent through my work that I leaned left," vaporwave pioneer Ramona Xavier, the woman behind Macintosh Plus, told THUMP.

But now, according to Rave News, vaporwave was mysteriously attracting fascists.

The article's comments section was quickly swarmed by neo-Nazis eager to defend their interest in vaporwave. "The National Socialists who lived in the time of Hitler were big fans of Richard Wagner," one wrote. "But in modern times, it is appropriate for us to turn to modern music." There was just one problem: the report, like everything else on Rave News, was fake news. No anti-fascist meeting of vaporwave artists had actually taken place.

"Our souls are wrapped up in these sounds."—Andrew Anglin, Daily Stormer founder

The point of The Onion-like satire wasn't clear. But knowingly or not, Rave News had hit on a real trend. On SoundCloud and Bandcamp, self-identified fascist musicians really have appropriated vaporwave, along with synthwave, a genre that nostalgically recapitulates the soundtracks of early video games like Sonic the Hedgehog and 80s movies like Blade Runner and Halloween. Today's fascists have stamped synthwave and vaporwave with a swastika and swirled them together to concoct a new electronic music subculture called fashwave (the "fash" stands for "fascism"), and another related microgenre called Trumpwave. The aesthetic of both might be summed up as Triumph of the Will on a Tron grid.

Fashwave is almost entirely instrumental, and wholly unoriginal. If it weren't for the jarring track titles—"Demographic Decline," "Team White," "Death to Traitors," to cite a few by fashwave artist Xurious—you might not be able to tell the difference between fashwave and the microgenres from which it draws inspiration. Occasionally, though, a track will interrupt its celestial synth atmospherics or arcade-like 8-bit bloops with a sample of Adolf Hitler ranting at a rally, or President Trump's speeches spliced together to make him boom, "The heroes are those who kill Jews!" The effect is a hammy nightmare—think Jane Fonda leading one of her 80s exercise routines at a Nuremberg rally.

Fashwave has become propaganda for the neo-fascist movement known as the "alt-right," a term that originated on America's far-right fringe in the early 2010s. Proponents of the loosely configured movement tend to reject "political correctness," trade, immigration, Islam, feminism, the left, "globalism," and establishment conservatism—which are also more or less the targets of Trump and, after his takeover, much of the Republican Party. Like fascism through the decades, the alt-right is shot through with contradictions; many of its followers disavow racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. But its underlying motive is still that of the fringe from which it sprang: white ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism.

With Trump's election and the spread of far-right parties in Europe, the alt-right is on the ascent. Like its Nazi and Italian fascist forerunners, it wants to infiltrate and remake popular culture. And fashwave—with its sonically inoffensive, largely lyric-free instrumentals—is the first fascist music that is easy enough on the ears to have mainstream appeal.

On 4chan's /pol/, the web's unofficial alt-right headquarters, posters talk frankly of fashwave as a "trap to make our ideas seem friendly and approachable," as one user wrote. Another warned that the slogans on fashwave-related art work needed to be softened for wider consumption: "Careful guys, the phrase needs to be oblique and vague, not direct 'GAS THE KIKES' /pol/ memes. Try some subtlety."

"I think it's great that we have our own culture, even if it's small."—alt-right leader Richard Spencer

With its tinny musical quality and tiny scope, however, fashwave is a long way from exuding any real cultural power, and might flame out any day. Until Buzzfeed brought the music into mainstream awareness with an article in December, it was virtually unknown beyond alt-right circles. There are only a handful of major fashwave artists, and they're not headlining any fascist raves or military parades. Instead, they're toiling in the internet's depths, getting a few thousand listens for every track. Leading fashwave producer Cyber Nazi's two biggest hits, "Right Wing Death Squads" and "Galactic Lebensraum," cracked 50,000 YouTube views—respectable, but hardly a cultural Reichstag fire.

Still, the alt-right's gatekeepers have adopted fashwave as the movement's signature sound. Black Sun Radio, an online neo-Nazi station, is saturated with both fashwave and non-fascist synthwave. Andrew Anglin, founder of leading neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, last year christened synthwave the "soundtrack of the alt-right," praising it as "the Whitest music ever [sic]" for its ostensible lack of African rhythmic influence. He posts a recurring feature called "Fashwave Fridays," which includes a synthwave playlist alongside typical synthwave imagery, like 80s women in bright spandex and retro sports cars. "The music is the spirit of the childhoods of millennials," Anglin wrote on the Daily Stormer. "Our souls are wrapped up in these sounds."

Over the phone with THUMP, Richard Spencer—president of white nationalist group the National Policy Institute, and widely regarded as the inventor of the term "alt-right"—said he loves fashwave. "Sometimes when I'm doing business, busy-work, I'll just flip on Xurious or Cyber Nazi on SoundCloud or YouTube and just listen to it," the white supremacist writer and publisher, who sports a Third Reich-reminiscent "fashy" haircut, said. "I think it's great that we have our own culture, even if it's small." (Spencer recently became a national meme when he was punched in the face by an anarchist while giving an interview to ABC News, footage of which has been set to different popular songs, including "Sandstorm," and which gave rise to the hashtag #punchanazi.)

Spencer has incorporated fashwave aeshthetics into the alt-right's branding. In November, at a National Policy Institute conference in Washington where Xurious was a musical guest, Spencer unveiled a logo for the movement. Its geometric "A" and "R," cast against a starry sky, looked like letters from an alien language, and over the mic, Spencer said the design was inspired by "synthwave nostalgia."

Fashwave's visuals, circulated on Twitter and 4chan, are just as essential as its music. Typical vaporwave pop-art—such as Windows 95 logos, Japanese characters, and Greco-Roman statues sprinkled on pastel or neon backgrounds—mingles with Nazi iconography, like Hitler in a Hawaiian shirt. At the same time, the neon-lit cityscapes of synthwave visuals are populated with red-eyed cyborg death squads.

In an email to THUMP, Cyber Nazi proclaimed fashwave to be the "direct heir" of Futurism, the 1910s avant-garde art movement that hitched itself to Italian fascism. The Futurists gloried in technological advances such as trains, automobiles, and electric light, as well as the violence of heavy industry and war. Similarly, "We have the internet and computers," Cyber Nazi wrote. Viewed a certain way, fashwave does reflect a kind of present-day Futurist project: a global cybernetic subculture geared towards millennials, propagated by memes like Pepe the Frog, and centered on sites like 4chan and the new Twitter alternative, Gab. In synthwave and vaporwave—genres born, like the alt-right, largely on the internet—the movement has found a natural fit.

Meanwhile, fashwave fans have cast aside punk, folk, and metal—music traditions with long histories of being appropriated as vehicles for far-right ideology—as relics. "It's impossible to build anything with [those] old and expired genres," Cyber Nazi told THUMP. "We are young people who have nothing to do with the skin heads gangs, hoolingans or kkk masons. [sic]" This disavowal, however, doesn't mean fashwave represents a friendlier fascism; in an interview on Right Stuff Radio, Cyber Nazi casually mentioned his hatred of "niggers" and "sand-niggers."

Vaporwave and synthwave aren't the first electronic music genres to be appropriated by fascists, either. In fact, they're just the latest iteration in a long history of co-opted machine-made sounds, one with roots in the early 20th century.

"It's impossible to build anything with old and expired genres"—fashwave producer Cyber Nazi

Back in the 1910s, Futurist thinker Luigi Russolo called for an explosive "art of noises" for the industrial age, and in the 1970s, early industrial and noise musicians consciously rose to the challenge. According to Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music by S. Alexander Reed, pioneers like Spahn Ranch, Nurse with Wound, and Pornotanz aimed to critique society's invisible totalitarianism by conjuring it as violent noise. However, industrial music's nihilistic outlook and martial overtones—including its use of fascist symbolism and regalia for shock value—also attracted neo-Nazi fans. An example of what Reed calls industrial's "often intentional language of ambiguity" can be found in Laibach, a leather-clad Slovenian group whose name refers to the Nazis' term for their occupation of Slovenia. The group has embodied a vaguely Stalinist aesthetic since the 80s so convincingly that North Korea welcomed them to Pyongyang in 2015.

As industrial music was emerging in the 70s, Kraftwerk was busy in Germany laying the groundwork for electronic pop music. The group always insisted that their artistic vision of a dawning cybernetic age was a continuation of the radical modernism of 1920s Weimar Germany rather than a homage to the Nazi era. But Kraftwerk's automaton-like presence recalled soldiers marching in lockstep, and the cover of their 1975 album, Radio-Activity, pictured a Nazi radio set called the Volksempfänger. That tension led Genosavior, one of the scene's artists, to praise Kraftwerk on Twitter as an "Early #FashWave prototype." One alt-right meme even rechristens them "Fashwerk."

https://soundcloud.com/user-625608547/team-white-free-download

Spencer, for his part, says his favorite bands are Depeche Mode and New Order—two groups that are practically synonymous with the 80s, the decade in which the alt-right bigwig grew up. But unlike most other fans, he sees a fascist sheen on the icy synth plains of the New Wave music they pioneered. Upon surface inspection, you can see where he might have gotten the idea. According to a biography of the band, New Order traced its name to a stray phrase from the Situationists, a postwar French art collective of anti-authoritarian Marxists. But "New Order" was also Hitler's term for his program of world domination. The band's earlier iteration, Joy Division, borrowed its name from brothels in the concentration camps, in addition to putting a drawing of a Hitler Youth drummer on the cover of its 1978 debut EP, An Ideal for Living. To the band's dismay, plenty of skinheads misunderstood where the band was coming from, and showed up at Joy Division's concerts.

Over the phone with THUMP, Spencer said he thought New Order and the New Wave bands that took after them "were consciously or unconsciously channeling... something darker, more serious, maybe more authoritarian."

At least with New Order, he's right, although it's complicated. On the one hand, the band was critiquing fascism as a growing menace in a late-70s Britain where imperial decline and industrial decay had radicalized a stagnated white working-class (sound familiar?). On the other hand, as Simon Reynolds recounts in his 2006 history Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, singer Bernard Sumner "enthused about the beauty (the art, architecture, design, even uniforms) that emerged despite 'all that hate and all that dominance.'" Fellow member Peter Hook, writes Reynolds, admitted to the dark allure of flirting with fascist aesthetics. "We thought it was a very, very strong feeling," Hook said.

That guilty fascist charge, so acutely felt by New Order in the 70s and 80s, now flows shamelessly through the alt-right, finding full expression in fashwave.

"By connecting an easily digestible message to the soundtrack of our youth, the alt-right seeks to subvert our critical thinking and directly appeal to our emotional selves."—Stefanie Franciotti AKA Sleep ∞ Over

But fashwave taps into still another lineage in the history of modern music—that of vaporwave's raw material, muzak, which in turn is haunted by the specter of fascism.

In September 1934, the National Fascist Militia Band, an Italian brass band created by Benito Mussolini, entered the New York studios of the newly formed Muzak corporation and recorded one of the first-ever sessions of muzak. There were 25 songs in the set, including an Italian ditty called "March on Rome (Anthem for a Young Fascist)" and America's own "The Star-Spangled Banner." The Muzak corporation piped the National Fascist Militia Band's tunes into hotel lobbies, restaurants, and homes under a sanitized alias: "The Pan-American Brass Band."

The Muzak corporation wasn't a fascist outfit itself, but its use of canned easy-listening music to spur on shoppers and workers had stark martial origins. Its founder, Major General George Owen Squier, was America's chief signal officer during World War I, responsible for the military's communications network. The company's patented "stimulus progression"—playlists calibrated to maintain workers' energy levels and morale through the day—first came into wide commercial use during WWII in armaments factories. According to Elevator Music: A Surreal History, by its heyday in the 1960s and 70s, muzak was everywhere: trickling out of megaphones at a Nixon inauguration, calming cattle in slaughterhouses and astronauts on their way to the moon, keeping missile operators awake and alert in underground nuclear silos. As if winking at the critics who called muzak (a portmanteau of Kodak and music) an instrument of societal control, the Muzak corporation branded itself a "System of Security for the '70s," as well as "The Total Communications System."

By 2009, following the economic crash, the Muzak corporation went bankrupt. (It was eventually bought out, renamed, and revived, and now creates customized playlists of pre-existing songs for store branding.) Around the same time, left-leaning experimental electronic artists like Daniel Lopatin, James Ferraro, and Ramona Xavier began plumbing all the bland sonic ambience of capitalism, including muzak and largely forgotten pop and smooth jazz numbers, resulting in what would later be known as vaporwave.

Lopatin, best known for his work as Oneohtrix Point Never, looped and slowed down bits of old pop songs for a 2009 compilation called Eccojams Vol. 1, released under the alias Chuck Person. Ramona Xavier's 2011 album Floral Shoppe distorted 80s pop and old smooth jazz, and her retro net-art aesthetic, presented as kitsch, has a become canonical vaporwave signifier, extended and reinterpreted by later acts like 2 8 1 4 and Death's Dynamic Shroud.wmv. James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual, released the same year, assembled cheap MIDI presets, the Skype login sound, and other bits of pointedly contemporary digital detritus into a gratingly cheery faux-muzak orchestra. While the project's absurdly gleeful tone leaves it unclear whether Ferraro's vision of life in the digital age is utopian, dystopian, or neither, that ambiguity and perhaps ambivalence has persisted in the music of the vaporwave scene he helped inspire.

In a 2011 essay that helped define the genre, Adam Harper asked: "Is [vaporwave] a critique of capitalism or a capitulation to it?" "Both and neither," he continued. "These musicians can be read as sarcastic anti-capitalists revealing the lies and slippages of modern techno-culture and its representations, or as its willing facilitators, shivering with delight upon each new wave of delicious sound."

The development of vaporwave ran parallel to that of synthwave, which emerged in the mid-2000s, rebooting the synthy 80s film scores by composers like John Carpenter, Vangelis, and Tangerine Dream. Within the past two years, the semi-ironic nostalgia of synthwave and vaporwave has outgrown its subcultural roots and seeped into the mainstream—a process exemplified by MTV's use of vaporwave in branding, and the popularity of the soundtrack to hit Neflix series Stranger Things, by Austin synthwave group S U R V I V E.

At the same time, fascists have flipped this retromania around, collapsing the ironic distance into a vortex of nostalgia for the worst elements of the Reagan era. According to Spencer, the alt-right's fascination with the 80s stems from looking back on the decade "as halcyon days, as the last days of white America." Fashwave, then, directly links pop culture's generalized 80s nostalgia to the alt-right's racist ideology. The "one connecting factor" of white nationalism, an alt-rightist declared on Twitter, is "a belief in the supremacy of the 1980s. This is the goal."

A vaporwave video by satirical artist Mike Diva

Stefanie Franciotti, who records under the alias Sleep ∞ Over, emerged from the same Austin-based, synthesizer-centric scene as S U R V I V E. She is decidedly anti-fascist, and described fashwave to THUMP as "weaponized nostalgia.

"By connecting an easily digestible message to the soundtrack of our youth," she said, "the alt-right seeks to subvert our critical thinking and directly appeal to our emotional selves."

Today, arguably, the 80s are back, but with a few modifications. The Reagan rictus smile has slumped into a scowl, and the Shining City on a Hill is to be ringed by a great wall. At the center of it all is Trump, a living time-capsule of 80s capitalist excess and garishness, and thus the ideal subject for fashwave. In "Trumpwave," a track by the synthwave artist iamMANOLIS is annexed to play over footage of a younger Trump wrestling at WWE, hitting on women, and eating stuffed-crust for a Pizza Hut commercial. Below the video, a YouTube commenter wrote: "When you see all these older videos it all makes sense. It's not that Trump is weird and we're going towards some parody of a society, it's that we already live in a parody. Trump is bringing back the sanity of the good old days." Another wrote simply: "The Donald is here. I feel the capitalism! <3 "

"Trumpwave" is an exemplar of the genre by the same name. Trumpwave shares an alt-right audience and at least one producer—Cyber Nazi—with fashwave. But the fashwave off-shoot is distinct in appropriating mainly vaporwave, and in its emphasis, through both sampled audio and video clips, on The Donald himself. In Trumpwave, he is recast as the modern-day inheritor of the mythologized 80s, a decade that is taken to stand for racial purity and unleashed capitalism. "Ivanka Vaporwave," a production by an alt-right YouTube channel, slows down the Cosmat Angels' 1985 "I'm Falling" over old clips of Trump's daughter Ivanka modeling as a young teenager. Cyber Nazi's "Take Back Our Future" rolls light muzak over stock footage of early 90s New York on a sunny day and Trump awkwardly dancing on Saturday Night Live.

Trumpwave exploits a vulnerability in vaporwave: its ambivalence about the cultural detritus that inspired it. This careful tension between irony and earnestness was part of what made vaporwave fun—it flirted with the implicit transgressiveness of appreciating its aggressively commercial source material. But that ambiguity left the aesthetic distressingly easy for the alt-right to appropriate by stripping it of irony and playfulness—by taking it literally, as a glorification of capitalism. Similarly, when synthwave artists exhumed 80s movies like Blade Runner, Robocop, and Terminator, they also dressed the music in the decade's fatalist retrofuturism. A glance at the album art of Cyber Nazi—with its jackbooted cyborg cops going door to door—shows how for fascists, this dystopia is utopia. Extrapolating from the 80s, fashwave embraces that decade's grim sci-fi forecasts as paradise.

There's nothing inherently fascist about any sound—everything is context. But the deployment of vaporwave and synthwave by the alt-right proves that fascism has survived the defeat of the Axis, incubating its own culture even as it lost all political power. New Order, Kraftwerk, and many others traced an enduring fascination with fascist aesthetics. Meanwhile, neo-Nazi subcultures thrived in the shadows of genres like industrial, punk, metal, and trance. Fashwave is just the most recent in a long line of fascist appropriations, stretching beyond music: the Nazi swastika is, of course, a literal inversion of a Buddhist symbol. But unlike other genres, fashwave arrives at a time when fascism itself is surging to global power for the first time since the 30s, and both its music and visuals can seem like a premonition of the future. Refracting a nostalgia for the 80s and a love of capitalism through the prism of Trump, fashave projects an image of a looming dystopia, one that grows a little more plausible by the day.